Judge May Find Adm Case Trying

December 12, 1996|By Nancy Millman, Tribune Staff Writer.

The trial of three former Archer Daniels Midland Co. executives indicted last week on criminal price-fixing charges is turning into a judicial hot potato, and the judge requested by prosecutors doesn't seem eager to hold on to it.

U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo is in the unusual position of ruling on whether he should preside over a case prosecutors want him to handle and defense lawyers apparently don't.

At a hearing in federal court here Wednesday where defense lawyers called the situation blatant judge shopping, Castillo said he would put off his decision on whether to keep the case until Monday.

Joseph J. Duffy, lawyer for one of the defendants, said he had canvassed court records going back more than a decade and could not find a single instance in which prosecutors had tried to transfer a case to a particular judge because of another case stemming from the same government investigation.

Judge Castillo, however, made it clear that the prospect of a lengthy antitrust trial was not one he relished.

"What I'm buying myself here is a complicated trial," he said. "I don't feel the need to do this if there will be criticism (from the public) regarding judge shopping.

On Dec. 3, a Chicago grand jury returned an indictment charging Michael D. Andreas, Terrance S. Wilson and Mark E. Whitacre, all former top-level executives at Decatur-based ADM, with engaging in a three-year conspiracy to set prices in the global market for the feed additive lysine. The case was assigned to federal Judge Blanche M. Manning.

The next day, the U.S. attorney's office and the antitrust division of the Justice Department filed a motion to have the case moved to Judge Castillo. In a consultation with Manning and Judge James H. Alesia, who had handled a related price-fixing case, it was agreed that Castillo could take the case.

Castillo already had handled the August case in which three of ADM's foreign competitors pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the government's investigation.

He also presided in October when ADM pleaded guilty to price-fixing in lysine and also in the market for the food and beverage ingredient citric acid. The judge the same day approved the sentence negotiated in the plea bargain--a $100 million fine and an agreement to cooperate in the investigation.

Government prosecutors said that the case involving Andreas, Wilson and Whitacre should go to Castillo because the cases are all related.

But lawyers for Andreas and Wilson said that the government is trying "to evade this district's random case assignment system."

A former federal prosecutor himself, Duffy argued that many government investigations of the past, including the far-flung Operation Greylord, comprised many individual cases that went to different judges.

And, the lawyers implied, the relationship between the judge and the prosecutors is important to the defense because of the nature of the case. Much of the evidence in the case comes through the FBI and Whitacre, who served as an undercover informant while working at ADM.

"We are going to allege that this case was the mother of out-of-control investigations," said Reid M. Weingarten, a Washington lawyer who represents Wilson. "If there was price-fixing here, it was under the supervision of the FBI."

Part of the government's argument for Castillo's taking on the trial is that he would be able to assess if companies and individuals who already have pleaded guilty are cooperating.

Scott Lassar, first assistant U.S. attorney, disclosed that the government already is having trouble getting ADM to live up to its agreement to turn over evidence and have its employees and executives cooperate with government investigators.

"Our history during the investigation was one of contention" when it came to getting documents, he said.